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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Feign death really works

After playing World of Warcraft, the 12 year old boy knew how to cope when he was attacked by a moose in the forest.

In the article he describes how he first yelled at the moose, distracting it so his sister got away, then when he got attacked and the animal stood over him he feigned death. "Just like you learn at level 30 in World of Warcraft."

Now who says you can't learn useful stuff from WoW? All I have to say is - I am really really glad his skills at feigning death were not resisted by that beast. Imagine if it had been an immune elite...

----------------(Now, after this story was told to me by a friend long after it had made its way around the net for a while, I decided to google a little, to try and figure out how come I get all these comments suddenly. That's when I saw that people complain about the translation of "elg" into "moose". Yes, you are correct, it should be "elk" not "moose". The problem is that when ever I use "elk" English speakers ask "what's an elk"? Then I have to explain that it's the European version of moose, and that is what you will find in Norwegian forests. So, I picked moose rather than elk. Sorry about that, to all the elks out there, I know you hate being called moose just as much as Norwegians hate to be called Swedes.)

Good for him. I think it's likely that he will also make wise decisions later in life, when shopping for quality goods, when grouping with others to complete tasks, and when staying organized and efficient in his personal habits.

All these things are right there to learn in games like WoW...to paraphrase something I read earlier today.."Games don't have to prove themselves as an educational method, they're how we've always learned. Schools are the new, radical, untried method."

:) I thought it was a very happy story, as it went so well. The boy was bruised, but as he had been hit in the back, his backpack took the brunt and he was not harmed. It does not tell how long he was still, just that he stayed totally quiet until the beast went away. It wasn't like he could check his watch.

And yeah, I wish the hearthstones would work outside the games. But imagine the inconvenience if you forgot where you set it, and found yourself at your previous hotel in Malmø when you should have been in Tokyo...

kelly: Yep, his parents are very proud of his tanking skills, as they saved his sister!

bioimmortality: correct, it's a hunter skill, which the boy also mentions in the interview. But yes, you are right, fear did not work, or the beast was immune, or just resisted. So those warrior/priest/warlock skills did not work in this case! (Also I suspect that the paladin bubble, the druid sleep, the mage iceblock or blink, the shaman stoneclaw totem or the rogue vanish would have been equally useless.)

If this kid really learn anything from WoW then he would have known that a moose is not aggressive unless attacked first. He could have jumped over and over and over and over and over the beast, made all the backslashed emotes he wanted too and even run through the moose a few hundred times without fear of it attacking which has left with only this to say "1337 omg wtf pwned!"

DOROTHEE SAID...Moose are trulyterrorifying creatures & I haveeven had them enter my nightmares.Now with my gaming experiences I'd know what to do should I come across a live one! Robert asked:"how long" did the "feign" last?I'd say, for this young brother,far TOO long.

Not quite. We have both moose and elk here in North America, too. Elk are usually found further south (e.g. Colorado) whereas moose tend to stick further north (e.g. Canada and Alaska, with occasional forays to Montana, Idaho, etc.)

I think one of my favorite memories was seeing a herd of 200+ elk outside Durango, Colorado in 1989.

Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër ?See the løveli lakesThe wøndërful telephøne systemAnd mäni interesting furry animalsIncluding the majestik møøseA Møøse once bit my sister...No realli! She was Karving her initials øn the møøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law -an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies: "The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist", "Fillings of Passion", "The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink"... Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

And with this contribution, quoting Monthy Python without giving credit where credit is due, I'll start being strict on what comments I permit. The above has already been offered to every other place I have been able to find where this case has surfaced, so while a classic, at this point it's getting a little old.

Taking this as a sign that the jokes to this thread are wearing thin: if you want your comment to be published from here on, it had better be good enough to make me laugh or stop to think and reconsider.

Just wanted to say that your profile pic isn't scaling well. I was reading your story about the kid who feigned death in real life (loved it, like almost all the other people who commented.)

Your pic to the side looked all pixellated, though. The properties showed it to be a much larger pic, constrained by HTML to a much smaller size. Firefox and Internet Explorer both failed to do that well. Would you like me to re-process the image to the desired size? Wouldn't take me more than a minute or two, with Photoshop. I'm on vacation anyway.

I just want to inform you that the animal should indeed be described as "moose" rather than "elk". Confusing as it is, the norwegian word "elg" does NOT correspond to the American "elk", but rather to the heavier moose, as it is correctly written in the article. The English word "elk" corresponds in Norwegian to the word "hjort", or specifically, amerikansk hjort (American deer) - the wapiti.

I want to add that the terms vary from British English to American English. Moose unambiguosly refers to the correct animal. The British however call the same animal "elk", which in American English refers to an entirely different animal, the wapiti, which does not inhabit Europe at all.

About Me

This is the journal of Torill Elvira Mortensen. I am an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. The topics of my writings here are among other things media studies, reader-response theory, role-play games, Internet Culture, travel, academic weirdness and online communication - put together at random.
Google scholar page.

Personal Publication and Public Attention, Torill Elvira Mortensen (2004): "Personal Publication and Public attention", in Gurak, Laura, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff and Jessica Reyman (ed): Into the Blogosphere; Rhetoric, Community and Culture of Weblogs, at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/, University of Minnesota.

Pleasures of the Player (pdf), Torill Elvira Mortensen (2003): Pleasures of the Player; Flow and control in online games, Doctoral Dissertation Volda College and University of Bergen.

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The Gamers' Space

The Gamers' Space is a small project I am doing in the spring 2009. It includes an electronic survey, pictures of game machines of different kinds, and interviews done at The Gathering, a large LAN party in Hamar, Norway. For participation, more information, links and addresses, check The Gamers' Space.